Lost Days, Endless Nights

Part-artist’s book and part-critical study, a collection of documentary photography that grapples with contemporary California and its many utopic and dystopic meanings. Los Angeles is, as Bertolt Brecht famously wrote in his “Hollywood Elegies,” both heaven and hell. In <Lost Days, Endless Nights< narrates a history from below--a history that pivots on the lives of the forgotten and dispossessed of Los Angeles: the unemployed, the precariously employed, the evicted, the unhoused, the depressed, and the exhausted. The book features portraits of those who struggle and attempt to get by in the city: from city’s dock workers, students, bus riders, petty criminals, office workers, immigrants, queer and trans activists. These portraits are set against the backdrop of images of natural disasters, ruined interiors, and smashed-in windows. Arguing that the current historical moment, marked by economic disaster and environmental catastrophe, necessitates a form of cultural recovery and counter-narrative, Witt advocates for a historical perspective that actively embraces the works and projects obscured and neglected throughout history.

Auteur

Andrew Witt

Texte du rabat

"A richly illustrated and yet scholarly account of the way assorted artists used the medium of documentary photography in California in the 1970s and 80s"--

Résumé
A critical study and artist’s book on the history of photography and film from Los Angeles.

Lost Days, Endless Nights tells a history from below—an account of the lives of the forgotten and dispossessed of Los Angeles: the unemployed, the precariously employed, the evicted, the alienated, the unhoused, the anxious, the exhausted. Through an analysis of abandoned archival works, experimental films, and other projects, Andrew Witt offers an expansive account of the artists who have lived or worked in Los Angeles, delving into the region’s history and geography, highlighting its racial, gender, and class conflicts. Presented as a series of nine case studies, Witt explores how artists as diverse as Agnès Varda, Dana Lixenberg, Allan Sekula, Catherine Opie, John Divola, Gregory Halpern, Paul Sepuya, and Guadalupe Rosales have reimagined and reshaped our understanding of contemporary Los Angeles.

The book features portraits of those who struggle and attempt to get by in the city: dock workers, students, bus riders, petty criminals, office workers, immigrants, queer and trans activists. Set against the landscape of economic turmoil and environmental crises that shadowed the 1970s, Witt highlights the urgent need for a historical perspective of cultural retrieval and counternarrative. Extending into the present, Lost Days, Endless Nights advocates for an approach that actively embraces the works and projects that have been overlooked and evicted from the historical imaginary.